One of the caches was at this historic building, designed to replicate a VARIETY of Italian architecture ca. 500 B.C.:

I like seeing nature at its most interesting and all these spider webs make a beautiful kind of art VERITE:

This lonely guy was all by himself in his area of minimal VEGETATION:

VOILA! I asked f0t0m0m to demonstrate for you his unique method of log extraction:

OK, I do have to give one away, but this is too good a VARIATION not to share. This is why we geocache – to celebrate!

Team VELS:
When I went to Europe last winter, I made a special VOYAGE into Denmark to find this cache:Statcache 33 Worldtop10 – 3 EMC of Northridge, CA
placed by Team VELS. They are now over here on a 7-week car tour of the western U.S. Their blog is in Danish, but they have taken some stunning photos, so I encourage you to take a look at their VISUALS!VELS blog

A fourth of my ancestors are from Sweden, and my name is entirely Swedish, being named after my great-grandmother on my dad’s side. I know I have distant cousins up in Linköpping, but looking them up will have to wait for the next trip.

Gerlinde, the new excited geocacher that she is, and I cruised through Country #3 in about 2 hours, finding 3 caches and stopping at a gas station to fill up and to find out how to really pronounce my name. Any guesses? That’s coming up….. meanwhile, we took a ferry across from Denmark to Sweden:

We took Europe’s longest bridge to return to Denmark, then went through this very long, well-lit tunnel:

We stopped at this shopping center:

There’s a cache under the stairs! Found it with my iPhone, as we did all of them… that’s all I brought with me. It was a little squirrelly, but it worked. Next time, I’ll bring my the Garmin Map60CSX,though.Pleasant Distractions #1 – Fields

Gerlinde bought her new Nüvi here, and I bought a Danish rap CD for my nieces for Christmans. After that, we ate at The American Restaurant:

I ordered a steak entree, which was cooked to perfection, and a yummy warm shrimp appetizer:

Alas, my stay was just over a week. It was enough time to see everyone and enjoy being there, though, and to whet my appetites – both figurative and literal – to return. On the way back, I did get to ride the spiffy German trains and have a white Christmas during my layover in Portland.

My sleeping compartment:

Frankfurt Südbahnhof, still dark at 7am:

At the airport in Frankfurt, they still have one of these fabulous old, mechanically clacking flight info signs:

Here’s the snowfall at Portland airport, about 12 hours later:

Next week, I’ll be posting about “winter” caching in Southern California, where it’s still a good time to be working on my tan. Until then – cache on!

When I learned that Vels in Denmark had hidden a cache for each of the top ten cachers, I knew I had to go find it, since I’d be staying so close in Northern Germany. Fortunately, my exchange sister, Gerlinde, has a penchant for adventure equivalent to mine, so off we went, following the maps in my iPhone, to find caches in the next country over.

It was the shortest day of the year, so the sun only got this high:

The first cache we found was at a rest stop, and it was a film can – but a really nice variation of the hide:Highway stop….Kongsted

Gerlinde.fi signs the log book:

Here are Jakob and Tina Vels, the cache hiders of the one in my honor:

They forgot where they put it, as they’ve hidden over 60 in this park:

OK, all you other Top Ten cachers… get yourselves to DK and find your caches!

After that, we went with them to a large sculpture garden with the art of Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950). I thought his work showed more realism than would be expected, considering his influences, but we only saw the outdoor part.
More on the artist:
on wikipedia
and a link to the museum, which is out in a rural part of northern Denmark.

We found two caches, one which Vels had DNFd before and walked right up to that day!KunstskattenElna

The weather was brisk and windy, but the views were marvelous and sweeping, so the experience was exhilarating.

Our trek to the next country over took us along the northern coast of Denmark.

The Baltic Sea is really foamy:

I’ve googled “what is sea foam?” and it would seem to be a mysterious substance. Anyone know about it?

We drove by Hamlet’s castle! Is something rotten in Denmark? Ah… so many quotes, so little blog space….